Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana) joined QOTSA on the road in 2002 for a small club tour in North America and some festival and club shows in Europe and Japan. He also played drums on all but one of the songs on Songs for the Deaf (2002). Here's why he joined up with the band:

Dave Grohl:

"...[The] Queens Of The Stone Age asked me to play a show with them and it was fucking great. It was like 'My heart is telling me I should experience this' - for the love of music, for my love of their new record and also to prove to myself that I could. Queens of The Stone Age have always been Josh and Nick and 50 million other people so they were this band I could finally have this fantasy with." - NME, July 2002

Everyone:

Josh: "[Gene] had all these other obligations when we started working on the record, so by day seven it was time for him to go. I called Dave and said, 'Can you come right now?'. It was noon, and he said, 'I'll be there at 6:30,' and by 8 p.m. we had tracked a few songs."

Dave: "I had joked before that I was pissed off they didn't ask me to play on [their last record,] R. I was a huge fan of the band, and their music's really fun to play drums to because I'm used to playing more back in the back 4/4 sort of stuff. So this was a lot more interesting."

Nick: "We set Queens up to break away from how things were when we were younger with Kyuss. We didn't try anything at all back then. It was a lot of shooting yourself in the foot. And now it's just [more fun] to be able to move about the cabin freely and play with people you like. The only rules are there are no rules." - MTV News, June 2002